Cooper and I only got a half hour walk this morning before brunch at my brother's house. So, after the meal I took him on an 8.2 mile walk around town... literally around a good portion of the village I live in. Good puppy! We both needed to work off some of what we ate at brunch. lol

Brunch was lovely. We usually wait until after my nieces open their Santa presents and everything is cleared away from that as we have family members who don't celebrate the holiday, but still like to get together with the family. Anyway, we made whole wheat bagels (yes, from scratch!), breakfast casserole (one vegetarian, and one heavy on the bacon), baked apples, and cut up a ripe pineapple. For the bagels, which came out very good we had cream cheese, hummus, fig jelly, dark chocolate hazelnut spread, and lox. I stuck with the cream cheese, hummus and lox for mine. Of course I shared some of the lox with Cooper, which he adored. I don't usually give him food from the table, but it was Christmas after all!

I will take him out again before bed time, so our mileage should be over 10 miles for the day. I also did some jumping jacks, and will do another set of 75 tonight. My goal is to be able to do 100 jumping jacks (with good form) without stopping. I figure that is a very achievable short term goal. When I was at the gym yesterday I mentioned to the personal trainer that I have now lost 145 pounds, and he suggested I make an appointment with him in January to go over my ST workout and see where we can modify it to get better results.

One of my goals for the Spring is to be able to load and unload my kayak from the top of my brother's car all by myself. That is about 60 pounds I need to be able to lift from the ground up over my head... and it is awkward weight due to the length and shape of the kayak. I was able to unload it just fine, but getting it back up on the car, especially after hours of paddling, was just a little bit out of my reach this past Summer. I think that if I start swimming again and focus on my upper body ST over the Winter that by Spring I might just be able to manage it. What that means is that I need to get back in the habit of going to the gym and the pool. I have gotten out of the habit of both of those things, but I know I can get back into the swing of things. I just need to WANT it!